Autopilot is a golden opportunity for lidar

Today, Waymo, Uber, Lyft, Baidu and Mercedes-Benz are integrating sensors worth about $200,000 into hundreds of traditional cars. In the meantime, trying to turn it into a fully self-driving car that can be driven on the road, that is, a driverless car. For example, Waymo has already provided services to some users and is integrating various sensors such as Lidar, Radar (RADAR), camera, inertial measurement unit (IMU) and GPS. Overall, the market for driverless cars is expected to exceed 100,000 by 2023 and will exceed 1 million by 2032.

The current global automotive market sells about 9,000 vehicles a year, and the autopilot function is gradually becoming a new trend. In 2017, Audi released the world's first mass-produced Level 3 self-driving car, the Audi A8, which is of course the world's first production car with a lidar. The laser radar used in the car was developed and produced by Valeo, a leading French auto parts manufacturer.

According to the report of Memes, Lidar technology has been applied in aerospace, science and technology archaeology, building measurement, wind power industry and other fields, and is currently facing a huge opportunity: the desire of automatic driving for laser radar. Yole expects the global automotive laser radar market to reach $5 billion by 2023 and $28 billion by 2032.

Lidar development history

Range of different laser radars

Impressive diversity of automotive lidars

In the past two years, more than 800 million US dollars have been invested in the laser radar company. Although many companies have a short start-up time, they have completed tens of millions of dollars in financing. According to Mamms Consulting, Blackmore recently received $18 million in funding from BMW and Toyota. Quanergy, which was established in 2012, completed $180 million in financing in 2017. These investment and financing events indicate that automotive laser radar technology is still immature. Start-ups, industrial manufacturers, Tier 1 suppliers and automotive OEMs are investing in different ways, but success is still unknown. However, in order to become a leader in automotive laser radar technology, there must be a price.

Major investment and financing events in the laser radar industry

Major M&A events in the lidar industry

On the technical side, the rich product range is impressive. Most current lidar products use lasers with wavelengths between 830 and 940 nanometers, as well as macroscopic mechanical scanning, such as those released by Velodyne. However, MEMS scanning mirrors are expected to become the next development direction of automotive laser radar technology, which can make laser radar smaller and cheaper. Since then, it is possible that Quanergy's optical phased array, which does not have any moving parts, can achieve true all-solid-state laser radar, so it is more reliable, smaller and cheaper.

Some vendors, such as ConTInental and XenomaTIx, have proposed flash laser radars, which also do not have any moving parts, using a laser to illuminate the entire scene simultaneously. Other vendors have proposed different solutions: Cepton and Luminar have released micro-moTIon scanning technology similar to MEMS scanning mirrors, while Neptec uses Risley prisms.

Although many manufacturers use wavelengths between 830 and 940 nanometers (because the corresponding optical components are more common), some vendors (such as Blackmore, Neptec, Aeye, and Luminar) are studying the 1550 nm wavelength. This wavelength of laser allows higher pulse power to be supplied to dark objects within a range of 200 meters, which is sufficient for vehicles on the highway to detect dangerous situations and stop safely during fast driving. At the same time, the laser of this wavelength can be eye-catched. Strong absorption, so as not to damage the retina; finally, the laser radar using this wavelength is better in dust robustness.

Diversity continues. Most automotive Lidar manufacturers use pulsed direct-detection laser radar, which sends light pulses to the target and uses photodetectors to measure the time required to calculate the distance. Some vendors are studying continuous wave ranging methods. For example, IFM and Benewake are studying phase shift ranging methods, while Blackmore and Oryx are studying frequency modulation ranging methods.

Major manufacturers of automotive laser radar

Automotive Lidar Ecosystem

Lidar: from technology to application

There is no doubt that automotive laser radar is currently evolving rapidly, but there are alternatives. Tesla announced that it will not use laser radar for autonomous driving, while TuSimple is developing a self-driving truck without lidar. In addition, the recently released Cadillac Super Cruise system relies heavily on maps. In terms of technology, automotive laser radar acquires imaging capabilities due to deflection of the laser beam. Visual processing and artificial intelligence are helping lidars better detect and classify target objects to understand three-dimensional space. In addition, the infrared camera can also meet the night vision application. All of these technologies have increased at an alarming rate, creating a highly competitive space for laser radar manufacturers. Therefore, it is still too early to determine which technology will eventually “rule” the self-driving car. However, we believe that redundancy and complementarity between various sensors must be considered for car autopilot!

Autopilot: Lidar compared to other sensors

The emerging applications of lidar are not limited to cars. The technology is increasingly used in buildings and geographic information systems and is a key component of automated guided vehicles (AGVs) that can help warehouses automate. In addition, Lidar is expanding its application in wind measurement and is gradually becoming an indispensable element of wind farms.

Automated driving has become one of the most watched technologies in the current automotive industry and the entire technology industry; driverless technology has also changed from crazy sci-fi creativity to the future of the automotive industry. Not surprisingly, autonomous driving technology will be widely seen in our lives, but there are still real difficulties in the bright future. Lidar, which provides 3D vision for automobiles, is a key technology to solve the problem of automatic driving. How will the future car develop? Let us wait and see!

Automotive Lidar Technology Development Roadmap